


find me an ocean without a sea

by underelectricstars



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Original Character Death(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-20
Updated: 2012-10-20
Packaged: 2017-11-16 15:39:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/541087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/underelectricstars/pseuds/underelectricstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a simple case of "wrong place, wrong time."</p>
            </blockquote>





	find me an ocean without a sea

**Author's Note:**

> So, welcome to my first attempt at fic writing, I guess. I figured it would be safer to set this in an OC-centric AU to allow me time to get my sea-legs, so to speak, and thus, this was born. It's structured a bit differently than I normally write, in regards to tenses and such, but I figured I might give it a shot and see where it got me. Constructive criticism would be much appreciated, and I'm all for suggestions for my next piece of writing.

It's a simple case of "wrong place, wrong time." That's all it is.

Mara Harper has never made a habit of missing her curfew, especially not once her parents extend it from 9:30 pm to 11:00 pm the night of her seventeenth birthday nine months prior.  And she definitely never made a habit of cutting through the orchards surrounding her house,  _especially_ not at night - she doesn't even like cutting through them when the midday sun is high in the sky, burning bright as it cuts through the lines of trees. She hates the orchards, if she's being honest; hates the way that it feels like there's always someone watching her as she makes her way through rows of trees, dodging branches to the face and avoiding holes where moles have broken through the dirt or dogs have escaped from their owners to bury bones that nobody will ever find. The orchards are old, and they're creepy, and they haven't been well-tended in years, since back in the eighties when people still harvested almonds from the trees on the edge of town.

Mara's never hated these orchards as much as she does now, as she makes her way through them at 10:30 at night, no flashlight and nothing to keep her mind off the sound of the wind whispering through the trees but her own voice. Every few steps, she whirls around, squinting into the darkness in search of the souce of the footsteps she kept thinking she was hearing, only to give up after a few seconds and keep up with her trek. She's fairly sure that she would have been better off just giving up, taking the long way home and accepting whatever punishment her parents had in mind for her. Or maybe she would have been better off calling them and telling them she was unable to find a ride home from her friend Matthias Porter's party, that they'd have to come and pick her up so she didn't miss curfew.

Hindsight was twenty-twenty and all that.

She's halfway home when she hears it - the dull thudding of footsteps that go from boot-clad, clumsy human to something lighter and all the more terrifying in a matter of seconds, like whoever was following her was  _trying_ to give away the fact that they were doing so. It unnerves her when she spins around and there's no one there, no clue as to who had been there what could have been just seconds before. Swallowing hard, she turns and darts in the other direction, darting towards home as fast as her legs will carry her (surprise, that's not fast - she's five feet, four inches of high metabolism but no athletic tendencies). A few minutes later, her lungs burning and muscles aching with the effort, she slows. Those footsteps are present behind her again, but this time, they're accompanied by a chuckle, one that speaks of ill intentions rather than genuine amusement with a situation. Her blood turns to ice, but she can't help turning around.

Again, there's no one there, and now, she's actually starting to worry. For three minutes - long, drawn out minutes that feel like hours as they tick by - she waits, half-expecting someone she knows to jump out from behind a tree and make her jump out of her goddamn skin, but nothing happens. Nothing appears - not a person or an animal or anything. Fear ties her stomach into knots as she starts backing up, turning back around as quickly as she can. 

" _Bye bye, miss American Pie, drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry_ ," she sings out, voice shaking and hopeful that someone who means her no harm will hear her, come to her aid, _something_. " _Them good ol' boys were drinkin' whiskey an' rye..._ " She doesn't know how much time has passed anymore, just knows she's been singing the chorus of 'American Pie' for a while now, hoping for the best as she walks.

And then there it is again, a laugh, bone-chilling low and slow and _awful_. This time, she doesn't turn around, can't bring herself to - just keeps walking and starts singing a little bit louder. " _Singin' this'll be the day that I die... This'll be the day that I die._ " There's the crunching of leaves underfoot and then an awful pain blossoming from her right shoulder. By the time she manages to grind her teeth against the pain enough that she can bear to open her eyes - which she didn't remember closing - all she sees is what looks like a wolf bounding away from her. It can't be a wolf though, she knows that. There haven't been wolves in California - especially not this area of California - in years. Her mind must be playing tricks on her.

She gets home with two minutes until her curfew. Instead of immediately reporting to her parents, she heards to her bedroom - the only one on the first floor - and cleans and bandages her shoulder, grimacing and biting back tears the whole time, and then changes into her pajamas and heads back out to let her parents know she's home.

She doesn't sleep that night.

* * *

When Mara wakes the next morning, she has to take two of the vicodin leftover from when she'd had her wisdom teeth removed earlier that year in order to cut down on the pain in her shoulder. It dulls the pain to an ache, the same sort of stiffness you get for working too much when you haven't worked out in ages. She walks to school, and she knows she looks like hell. It's the middle of October and she's wearing a pair of cut-off jean shorts with untied boots and an oversized tye-dyed shirt; there are dark circles under her eyes and her hair is pulled into a messy, frizzy braid. 

Matthias doesn't believe her when she says that a wolf bit her; neither does his sister, Stella. They tell her that she's crazy and that, just like she thought, there are no wolves around here, and she smiles and nods tells them that it must have been the Donaldson's german shepard or something.

She figures that she has nothing to worry about until fourth period, when she gets a bloody nose and asks to go to the nurse. Instead, she gathers her things and goes to the girls' bathroom down the hall, and she's horrified at what she finds: her nose isn't so much bleeding as it is leaking some sort of crazy black something.  _That's_ when she starts worrying, when she peels the bandage off of her shoulder and has to stifle a terrified screech when she sees that same black liquid seeping from her wounds.

The nurse doesn't seem to know what to do when she finally does go to the office; the woman panics and fusses over her before eventually calling an ambulance and Mara's parents. 

* * *

Mara ends up in the hospital for hours.

She doesn't get the chance to leave.


End file.
